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An Anarchist FAQ - Were the Whites a threat during the Kronstadt revolt?
The lack of foreign intervention during the Kronstadt revolt suggests more than just the fact that the revolt was not a "White conspiracy." It also suggests that the White forces were in no position to take advantage of the rebellion or even support it.
This is significant simply because the Bolsheviks and their supporters argue that the revolt had to be repressed simply because the Soviet State was in danger of White and/or foreign intervention. How much danger was there? According to John Rees, a substantial amount:
"The Whites, even though their armies had been beaten in the field, were still not finished -- as the emigre response to the Kronstadt rising shows . . . They had predicted a rising at Kronstadt and the White National Centre abroad raised a total of nearly 1 million French Francs, 2 million Finnish marks, õ000, $25,000 and 900 tons of flour in just two weeks; Indeed, the National Centre was already making plans for the forces of the French navy and those of General Wrangel, who still commanded 70,000 men in Turkey, to land in Kronstadt if the revolt were to succeed." [Op. Cit., pp. 63-4]
To back up his argument, Rees references Paul Avrich's book. We, in turn, will consult that work to evaluate his argument.
Firstly, the Kronstadt revolt broke out months after the end of the Civil War in Western Russia. Wrangel had fled from the Crimea in November 1920. The Bolsheviks were so afraid of White invasion that by early 1921 they demobilised half the Red Army (some 2,500,000 men). [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 13]
Secondly, the Russian emigres "remained as divided and ineffectual as before, with no prospect of co-operation in sight." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 219]
Thirdly, as far as Wrangel, the last of the White Generals, goes, his forces were in no state to re-invade Russia. His troops were "dispersed and their moral sagging" and it would have taken "months . . . merely to mobilise his men and transport them from the Mediterranean to the Baltic." A second front in the south "would have meant almost certain disaster." Indeed, in a call issued by the Petrograd Defence Committee on March 5th, they asked the rebels: "Haven't you heard what happened to Wrangel's men, who are dying like flies, in their thousands of hunger and disease?" The call goes on to add "[t]his is the fate that awaits you, unless you surrender within 24 hours." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 219, p. 146 and p. 105]
Clearly, the prospect of a White invasion was slim. This leaves the question of capitalist governments. Avrich has this to say on this:
"Apart from their own energetic fund-raising campaign, the emigres sought the assistance of the Entene powers. . . . the United States government, loath to resume the interventionist policies of the Civil War, turned a deaf ear to all such appeals. The prospects of British aid were even dimmer . . . The best hope of foreign support came from France . . . the French refused to interfere either politically or militarily in the crisis." [Op. Cit., pp. 117-9]
The French government had also "withdrew its recognition of Wrangel's defunct government" in November 1920 "but continued to feed his troops on 'humane grounds,' meanwhile urging him to disband." [Op. Cit., p. 105]
Thus, the claim that foreign intervention was likely seems without basis. Indeed, the Communist radio was arguing that "the organisation of disturbances in Kronstadt have the sole purpose of influencing the new American President and changing his policy toward Russia. At the same time the London Conference is holding its sessions, and the spreading of similar rumours must influence also the Turkish delegation and make it more submissive to the demands of the Entente. The rebellion the Petropavlovsk crew is undoubtedly part of a great conspiracy to create trouble within Soviet Russia and to injure our international position." [quoted by Berkman, The Russian Tragedy, p. 71] Lenin himself argued on March 16th that "the enemies" around the Bolshevik state were "no longer able to wage their war of intervention" and so were launching a press campaign "with the prime object of disrupting the negotiations for a trade agreement with Britain, and the forthcoming trade agreement with America." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 52] The demobilising of the Red Army seems to confirm this perspective.
Moreover, these governments had to take into account of its own working class. It was doubtful that they would, after years of war, been able to intervene, particularly if there was a clearly socialist revolt coming from below. Their own working class, in such a situation, would have prevented intervention by foreign capitalist states (a fact Lenin acknowledged in July 1921 [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 62]).
So in spite of massive social unrest and the revolt of a key fortress protecting Petrograd, the Western powers took no action. The Whites were disorganised and could only raise non-military supplies (none of which reached Kronstadt). Could this situation have changed if Kronstadt had spread to the mainland? It is doubtful simply because the Western governments, as Lenin argued, had to take into account the anti-interventionist position of their own working classes. The Whites had no military forces available (as the Bolsheviks themselves argued). Avrich notes it would have taken months for these forces to reach Kronstadt by which time soviet democracy would have been consolidated and ready to protect itself.
Even if we assume that Kronstadt had survived until the ice melted while Petrograd remained under Bolshevik dictatorship it, again, is doubtful that it would have been the basis for renewed White attacks. Neither Wrangel's troops nor foreign government forces would have been welcomed by Red Kronstadt. While non-military aid would have been welcome (i.e. food supplies and so on), it is hard to believe that the Conference of Delegates would have allowed troops to arrive or pass them by to attack Petrograd. Simply put, the Kronstadters were fighting for soviet power and were well aware that others may try to support the revolt for their own, anti-revolutionary, reasons (see section 7).
So it seems that the possibility of foreign intervention was not a real threat at the time. The arguments of Lenin at the time, plus the demobilisation of the Red Army, points in that direction. Moreover, the total lack of response by Western governments during the revolt indicates that they were unlikely to take advantage of continuing unrest in Kronstadt, Petrograd and other towns and cities. Their working classes, sick of war and class consciousness enough to resist another intervention in Russia, would have been a factor in this apathetic response. Wrangel's troops, as the Bolsheviks were aware, were not a threat.
The only real threat to Bolshevik power was internal -- from the workers and peasants the Bolsheviks claimed to be representing. Many of the ex-soldiers swelled the ranks of peasant guerrilla forces, fighting the repressive (and counter-productive) food collection squads. In the Ukraine, the Bolsheviks were fighting the remnants of the Makhnovist army (a fight, incidentally, brought upon the Bolsheviks by themselves as they had betrayed the agreements made with the anarchist forces and attacked them once Wrangel had been defeated).
Thus the only potential danger facing the "soviet power" (i.e. Bolshevik power) was soviet democracy, a danger which had existed since the October revolution. As in 1918, when the Bolsheviks disbanded and repressed any soviet electorate which rejected their power, they met the danger of soviet democracy with violence. The Bolsheviks were convinced that their own dictatorship was equivalent to the revolution and that their power was identical to that of the working class. They considered themselves to be the embodiment of "soviet power" and it obviously did not bother them that the demand for free soviets can hardly be considered as actions against the power of the soviets.
In such circumstances, the Bolshevik government viewed the Kronstadt revolt not as socialists should but rather as a ruling class. It was suppressed for "reasons of state" and not to defend a revolutionary regime (which was, by this stage, revolutionary in name only). As Bakunin had argued decades before, the "workers' state" would not remain controlled by the workers for long and would soon became a dictatorship over the proletariat by an elite which claimed to know the interests of the working class better than they did themselves (see section 15).
The only possible justification for maintaining the party dictatorship was the argument that soviet democracy would have lead to the defeat of the Communists at the polls (which would mean recognising it was a dictatorship over the proletariat and had been for some time). This would, it is argued, have resulted in (eventually) a return of the Whites and an anti-working class dictatorship that would have slaughtered the Russian workers and peasants en mass.
Such a position is self-serving and could have been used by Stalin to justify his regime. Unsurprisingly enough, the Hungarian Stalinists argued after crushing the 1956 revolution that "the dictatorship of the proletariat, if overthrown, cannot be succeeded by any form of government other than fascist counter-revolution." [quoted by Andy Anderson, Hungary '56, p. 101] And, of course, an even more anti-working class dictatorship than Lenin's did appear which did slaughter the Russian workers and peasants en mass, namely Stalinism. No other option was possible, once party dictatorship was fully embraced in 1921 (repression against dissidents was more extreme after the end of the Civil War than during it). It is utopian in the extreme to believe that the good intentions of the dictators would have been enough to keep the regime within some kind of limits. Thus this argument is flawed as it seriously suggests that dictatorship and bureaucracy can reform itself (we discuss this in more detail in section 13).
